Is Big Data The New Back Seat Driver?

January 6, 2016

Automotive companies aren’t the only ones looking to profit from cars becoming increasingly more technologically advanced. Now that Big Data is making its way into the average vehicle, Insurance Companies are hopping in.

Insurance companies thrive off of offering protection that people hopefully rarely need. The average person pays roughly $130-$200 per month for car insurance. Now, even though there are some pretty terrible drivers out there, people tend to not crash their cars too often. This means that you are paying the insurance companies a lot of money to protect you on the off chance you get into a wreck. It is not that people shouldn’t have insurance, the point is that insurance companies bank on good drivers to make them more money.

This is where Big Data comes in.

If Insurance Companies can track their clients’ driving habits, they can begin to determine which people have a higher chance of getting into an accident. This allows Insurance Companies to significantly reduce their risk rate and ensure greater profit than loss. With some of the monitoring technology being as annoying as alerting you when you accelerate or break too quickly, why would people want this feature in their car? The Insurance Companies are offering discounts to those who sign up and continue to display good driving.

The flip side of this perk is that as soon as drivers make a mistake or practice less than perfect driving habits, the insurance companies can raise your rates! Even though the Insurance Companies claim they wouldn’t do such a thing, there are always loop holes, like offering much smaller discounts to punish bad drivers. Even if people want to opt out of this monitoring, they will be seen as a red flag to potential Insurance Companies. Although this technology could potentially motivate people to become better drivers and save more money, it may also just be another way for Insurance Companies to sit pretty and push the monetary risks onto their clients. What do you think, should our driving habits be monitored by the insurance companies or should we be free to drive as we please?